The Collected Poems of Georges Bataille [Hardcover]

Georges Bataille (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0802313248 | ISBN-13: 978-0802313249 | Publication Date: December 21, 1998

This is the first collected English translation of Bataille's poems. Bataille's poetry is definitely the poetry of a philosopher, but it is also a poetry with an obsessively erotic, often scatological edge, frequently pushing the boundary of what is or isn't obscene. Bataille believed that everything relates to the workings of desire and death in sexuality, but he also believed that poetry was the product of ""hate"" (and other extreme emotions), just as much as erotic pleasure accedes to self-annihilation. But Bataille was interested in actual action, not just disengaged hypothesis concerning the sexual act. Dufour Editions is pleased to bring Bataille's poetry to print in English. ""This is the audacious, frightful side of surrealism.""-Library Journal ""Bataille produced some of the most transcendent, pointedly filthy literature of the century, and these poems, together in English for the first time, are no exception.""-Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Bataille (1897-1962), French avant-garde critic, editor, and novelist, is best known for provocative "erotic" novels and offbeat philosophical theories. His overlooked poetry, here translated into English for the first time, mingles religious and scatological imagery. Nonbelieving, anti-Puritan, aspiring to freedom of thought without "moral and social constraint," Bataille's world is one in which love and passion are obstacles to openness of mind. Using X-rated erotic motifs, Bataille turns visceral functions into a "headless bird with wings that beat the night"; idealism becomes the "funereal immodesty of dead bones," and stars "anguish beyond compare." Like the better-known Jean-Paul Sartre, Bataille fends off "self-annihilation" by envisioning a beleaguered and austere existence: "the immense universe is death/ I am the fever/ the desire." Confronting "the void," Bataille bravely concludes, "I was grimacing and laughing, lips wide apart, teeth naked." This is the audacious, frightful side of surrealism.?Frank Allen, Northampton Community Coll., Tannersville, PA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

(the Sidewalk Of Danaide)
All The Way To The Boots In The Eyes
As I Die I Would Like To Hold
The Bald Man
The Bird
Black Night
The Brown Waltz
The Castle
The Charnel House
The Church
The Church Square
Coryphea
Cracked Skull
The Dawn
The Dead Sun Was Illuminating The Hairy Shadow
The Deepness Of A Night
The Discord
Dressed In My Bloody Sweat
The Earth
Earth Spin Spin Earth
Eleven Poems Taken From The Archangelical
Endless Visage
Even Unto The Hole Of The Stars
From The Heights Of Montserrat
Gloria In Excelsis Mihi
God
Grief
The Hoarfrost
The Houses
I Gave To Limbour A Rendez-vous
I Hurl Myself Among The Dead
I Place My Cock
I Spread The Legs
I Was Dreaming Of Touching The Sadness Of The World
Insignificance
Invocation To Chance
It's The Newest Dance
Laughing
Laughter Of Birds Bloody Mud
The Lightning
Mademoiselle My Heart
The Marseillaise Of Love
The Mask
Mass Of Earth In The Sky
Morning Twilight
My Asshole Is The Altar
My Song
Myself
Night Is My Nudity
Oh Cranium
The Oratorio
Oresteia
Pee
The Roof Of The Temple
The Seminary
Sleepless Night
Solitude
The Sun
Swollen Like A Dick My Tongue
The Tolling
The Tomb
The Tomb Of Louis Xxx
The Undifferentiated Being Is Nothing
The Void
The Wall
The Washing
The Window
With Romaine
The Wolf Sighs...
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 140 pages
• Publisher: Dufour Editions (December 21, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802313248
• ISBN-13: 978-0802313249
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,598,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cute, February 1, 2005

By 

M. Hori "Jesse Glass" (Urayasu, Chiba Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Collected Poems of Georges Bataille (Paperback)

I'm a fan of Bataille, but I'm afraid that in most translations into English this major thinker comes across as being merely silly about sex and excrement and the Absolute. From his own febrile, pathological alluvium located in a fertile triangle between Eros and Thanatos, anus and genitals, Bataille (said in the helpful introduction by the translator to be using poetry to reach the Eternal) comes up with cuties like these:

The Wall

A hatchet
give me a hatchet
so I can frighten myself
with my shadow on the wall
ennui
feeling of emptiness
fatigue.

I have to admit feeling like that myself recently. And:

Laughing

To laugh and laugh
at the sun
at the nettles
at the pebbles
at the ducks

at the rain
at the pope's p**
at mommy
and a coffin full of sh**.

It doesn't get any better than that folks, although Bataille makes lots of references to the void, Zarathrustra, Heraclitus, and other touchstones of modern Western culture. I do admire his mixture of profundity and scatology and wish that more post-modern writers would follow Bataille's example. Why let the makers of popular movies and television sit-coms get a jump on the rest of us?

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Death + Sex + More Death, June 21, 2001

By 

Joe (Dearborn, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Collected Poems of Georges Bataille (Paperback)

Bataille's poetry is often beautiful, using words and ideas to paint vague emotional pictures. You might get bored when he goes on and on about immensity or death, but it's worth it for the good parts.